News Items

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4362, 19 January 1909, Page 1

News Items

A whale is able to remain under water for an hour and a half.

Copper is said to be the metal first known to man and used in the arts.

The only part of the human body that is not hardened by age is the skin.

Among certain of the Kaffirs, marriage by purchase or capture is still practised. A frog cannot breathe with its mouth open When the mouth is open the nostrils remain closed.

It would take a trench 2,400 miles long, and 10ft. deep, to hold the water consumed in London in one year.

Of the 6,000 species of birds, 503 are to be found in Europe, The caterpillar devours 6,060 times its own weight in food in a month.

The egg of the Mexican humming-bird is scarcely bigger than a pin’s head. A frog’s skin is the thinnest, and at the same time one of the toughest, leathers tanned. The average life of a coin is 21 years. The coinage of silveris the most profitable to the Mint.

A certain doctor declares that sea air has a remarkable stroug influence in exciting a craving for alcoholic stimulants.

Waves 20ft. high exert a force of about one ton to the square foot, and are strong enough to move boulders of 15 cubic feet.

! Swallows fly low before rain j> because the insects they pursue 'are then nearer the ground, to escape the moisture of the upper air.

An oculist says that the opera glasses which may be hired in most theatres are often the means of spreading serious eye diseases.

The most severe frost; re'* corded iu England was in 18634, when oaks'were split by the cold, and the ice on the Thames was 11 ins. thick. .: v , i

A spoon iu a glass filled with hot water prevents the breaking .1 of the glass, because the metal easily absorbs a large part of theke'at. * '_w ‘. It has beeu observed that iu a railway collision those persons ... v who happen to be asleep at the time generally escape the bad effects of the shaking and concussion.

The cross mark instead of a j signature did not originate in ;| ignorance. It was always ij appended to signatures in jj mediaeval times as .am attes till lion of good faith.

The much m iligned cuckoo Is one of the most useful birds, riince the number of caterpillars, devoured by it is almost inert; dible- A bird in good condi- -j j-ion will do away with as many ;l s ten to the minute.